… But if not Gord, who?

Rees's shift was cancelled. The Belt had a second foundry, separated from the ruin by a hundred and eighty degrees, and Rees would be expected to call there on his next working shift; but for now he was free.

He pulled his way slowly back to his cabin, staring with fascination at the blood-trails left by his hands on ropes and roofs. His head seemed still to be full of smoke. He paused for a few minutes at the entrance to his cabin, trying to suck clean oxygen from the air; but the ruddy, shifting starlight seemed almost as thick as smoke. Sometimes the Nebula breezes seemed almost unbreathable.

If only the sky were blue, he thought vaguely. I wonder what blue is like… Even in his parents' childhood — so his father had said — there were still hints of blue in the sky, off at the edges of the Nebula, far beyond the clouds and stars. He closed his eyes, trying to picture a color he had never seen, thinking of coolness, of clear water.

So the world had changed since his father's day. Why? And would it change again? Would blue and those other cool colors return — or would the redness deepen until it was the color of ruined flesh—

Rees pulled his way into his cabin and ran the spigot. He took off his tunic and scrubbed at his bloodstained skin until it ached.

The flesh peeled from the body in his hands like the skin from rotten fruit-sim; bone gleamed white—

He lay in his net, eyes wide, remembering.

A distant handbell rang three times. So it was still only mid-shift — he had to endure another shift and a half, a full twelve hours, before he had an excuse to leave the cabin.

If he stayed here he'd go crazy.

He rolled out of his net, pulled on his coverall and slid out of the cabin. The quickest way to the Quartermaster's was along the Belt past the wrecked foundry; deliberately he turned and crawled the other way.